Gavin McHenry knew he could be a Division I football player. Now, things are becoming real.

McHenry, a 6-foot, 175-pound cornerback from Chaparral, recently landed his first offer from Connecticut. Utah has also promised an offer.

“It takes a lot of pressure off of what my parents have to do,” McHenry said today. “They don’t have to worry about having to afford college, which is definitely going up there in price every year. … And it helps in my mind, too, knowing that I’m going to be playing D-I football in college. It’s every kid’s dream.”

From the top — that’d be Frontier Academy’s Hannah Braun, who has 17 goals and a state-best 40 points — each of Colorado’s most potent scorers do so in spurts.

Middle Park’s Hannah Levett, who is second in the state with 33 points and 15 goals, had a four-goal, one-assist game against Braun and Frontier Academy. (Braun had a goal and an assist in that game; three days later, against Berthoud, she scored four goals and assisted on another.)

The state’s big-school scoring leading, Lillie Toaspern of Denver East, scored six of her nine goals against Denver South last Friday — and notched all three assists.

That’s not to say there hasn’t been consistency: Braun and Levett each have five multi-goal games, including three games of three goals or more. Jacqueline Rigali, she of 12 goals and two assists, has multi-goal games in five of Frederick’s six games.

Recruiting quick hits:

• Arvada West’s Paul Thurston picked up his tenth offer on Friday, this one from Arizona, according to ColoradoPrepReport.com. The Wildcats join Arizona State, Colorado, Kansas, Michigan, Nebraska, Notre Dame, Oregon, Stanford and Utah in vying for the 6-5, 274-pound offensive tackle.

• Valor Christian lineman Alex Kozan was offered by Illinois, according to ColoradoPrepReport.com. He’s up to eight: Arizona, Arizona State, Arkansas, CU, CSU, Illinois, Kansas, Kansas State and Syracuse have also offered.

Elsewhere in the world of preps:

• Sterling’s 4A basketball champions will be honored with a mini-parade of sorts through Sterling.

It was a hectic week for Valor Christian’s Brock Berglund, the top recruit in Colorado’s 2011 football class. After CU officially fired coach Dan Hawkins last Tuesday, his phone and email went crazy, totaling around 200 messages.

Berglund released a statement Wednesday saying he was still committed, then threw for three touchdowns and ran for two more in the fifth-seeded Eagles’ 49-7 win over No. 12 Widefield on Friday.

We caught up with the senior this weekend for more in-depth thoughts on Hawkins’ firing and Berglund’s recruitment.

Michael DeWall smiles. Thompson Valley’s first-year football coach is thinking about the answer to a question just lobbed his way. It’s an answer that could ultimately define T.V.’s season.

But inquiring minds wanted to know: How do you instill a winning attitude in a program that’s lost 21 of its past 22 games — including 11 in a row?

“It’s kind of one of those intangible things: having kids know what it takes to win, and going into every football game realizing that you are capable of wining this ballgame and not feeling like you’re out of it even before you take a single snap,” said DeWall, who came over from Platte Valley in the summer after eight years at the helm there which included 2007’s 2A championship. “Trying to develop that, I don’t know what the magic formula is — or if there are any magic words.”

Broomfield High graduate Tony Stubblefield has been hired as an assistant coach at Oregon. (Courtesy U. of Cincinnati sports information)

Broomfield graduate Tony Stubblefield has joined Dana Altman’s new basketball staff at Oregon, according to the Eugene Register-Guard. Stubblefield, 40, had spent the past four seasons as an assistant at Cincinnati.

The Ducks hired Altman away from Creighton in April after a lengthy search.

Stubblefield, one of the top prep players in state history, has been an NCAA assistant for 16 seasons.

His stops include six seasons as an assistant at New Mexico, where he served as interim head coach for the 2004-05 season, as well as recruiting coordinator. Stubblefield also held the same title for four seasons at the University of Texas-Arlington.

Neil Devlin, originally from the Philadelphia area, has covered high school sports in Colorado for more than 30 years, writing about the people, athletes and events that encompass the Rocky Mountain prep sports world.